IT services major Wipro has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek Obama administrations intervention to remove provisions in a proposed US immigration Bill that are discriminatory towards Indian IT firms.

Provisions of the Senate Bill that are discriminatory and target Indian companies are outplacement bans and restrictions; attestation on recruitment of US workers; and higher wages to H1B employees vs American employees, Wipro chairman Azim Premji said in a letter addressed to PM.

We want your support to seek White House intervention to eliminate the discriminatory provisions in both the Senate and House Bills and to treat Indian IT service providers at par. This is in the interest of Indo-US trade relations and in keeping with your vision to increase bilateral trade by five times from the current level of $100 billion, Premji said.

The US Senate in June passed a landmark immigration Bill retaining killer provisions on H-1B Visas that would badly hit Indian IT companies in America.

Discriminating against Indian companies in favour of American IT services companies, including leading companies aggressively selling into India, this is not in the interest of free trade, Premji said.

The Bill, if it becomes law in the present form, will deal a blow to Indian IT services firms using the guest worker visa (H1B programme) to win contracts in the US as it legislates higher fees and salaries, thereby robbing Indian companies of their competitive low-cost edge.

Seeking to assuage Americas concerns, Premji said: Indian IT companies in US in the past five years have created American jobs of atleast 35,000 and today support 280,000 jobs in the US. Three out of these four jobs are held by Americans. Contrary to this, a leading American Services company in the last six years has reduced 36,000 American workers.

If discriminatory elements against the Indian IT industry survive in the final form of the Bill, we believe it will be detrimental to India-US trade and encourage Indian government to be more conservative in opening up trade between US and India, he added.